It covers the basics of animation—that is, Silverlight's storyboards and animations, which are used to provide interactivity to Silverlight applications. You'll take an in-depth look at double, point, and color animations. You'll also learn the difference between linear, spline, and discrete keyframes, and how they affect your objects as they move.

But it doesn't stop there. You'll go well beyond those simple timeline-based animations and learn how to create purely code-based animations. You'll use vectors to make objects move and bounce off boundaries and each other. You'll explore particle systems, kinematics, and collisions. You'll also learn how to use trigonometry to animate objects and simulate 3D motion in a 2D environment. The essential trigonometry required to create complex motion is simplified and explained through a series of fascinating and fun examples that can be incorporated into your own applications, games, and experiments.

Whether you're already familiar with Silverlight and you want to learn how to open it up, a Flash developer interested in expanding your skill set, or a web developer looking to take the next step into rich interactive application development, this book will bring you up to speed on Silverlight 2 and show you what it can do. From techniques for creating frame-based animations to learning how to simulate 3D in a 2D environment, there is something here to satisfy anyone's appetite for animation and interactivity.

In this book, you'll learn how to:

• Break free from the timeline and animate objects using code
• Add interactivity between objects through collision detection and reaction
• Implement forward and inverse kinematic chains to create lifelike motion
• Build particle systems and apply gravity to particles to create fountains and explosions
• Implement a virtual reality object viewer for simulating 3D objects

Summary of Contents

• Part One: Getting Started
  • Chapter 1 - What You Need to Know
• Part Two: Silverlight Animation: the Basics
  • Chapter 2 - Basic Transforms
  • Chapter 3 - Storyboards and Animations
  • Chapter 4 - Animation Techniques
• Part Three: Advanced Animation
  • Chapter 5 - Coordinates in Silverlight
  • Chapter 6 - Using Trigonometry for Animation
  • Chapter 7 - Simulating 3D in 2D
  • Chapter 8 - Collisions
  • Chapter 9 - Kinematics
  • Chapter 10 - Particle Systems
  • Chapter 11 - Silverlight VR (SLVR) Objects